Helen+Skoza

On July 3, 1917, 31-year-old homemaker Helen Skoza died at Chicago's Henroten Hospital from an abortion perpetrated by nurse Elizabeth Schade. Schade never went to trial for Helen's death, and went on to kill Fern Strecker in 1926.

Helen, a native of Austria Hungary, was the daughter of George and Mary (Mrokovicez) Kavas.

Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good.

In fact, due to improvements in addressing these problems, maternal mortality in general (and abortion mortality with it) fell dramatically in the 20th Century, decades before Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion across America.

For more information about early 20th Century abortion mortality, see [|Abortion Deaths 1910-1919].



 For more on pre-legalization abortion, see [|The Bad Old Days of Abortion] Source: Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database



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